Good Morning. Dr E's -- What Kind of Eater Are You?

Hi Gina
I'm a Sweeter or Carb addict.  Not yet completely recovered.....
My surgeon also presented the information in much the way you did.  I also had uncontrolled reflux which tends to respond a little better to the RNY.  And my chronic cough is gone!!!!

My surgeon did not suggest DS, although he performs it very routinely.  He did not feel that it would provide the best outcome for my individual situation.  I agree, especially since I'm already at 105% excess weight loss.

You have one of the good DS surgeons we routinely recommend to folks looking for one of the few surgeons who perform the DS. Your surgeon and my surgeon are connected in a way. Dr Elariny trained Dr Bonani who is one of the surgeons in your surgeon's practice. Maybe that's why they present the different surgeries the same way...that and they actually do all the WLSs and don't just push a couple of options. I think since you had all the information, you chose the best surgery for you. We should all be so lucky. :)

--gina
 

I am just your plain, ordinary compulsive overeater.  Addicted to refined carbs and large quantities.  Scared to death of being hungry, ate all the time to head off that empty feeling.  Obsessed with all things food and eating.  I was thinking about my next meal while I was eating my first.  Thought about food, cooking, restaurants and other places where I could get food.  I once drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas because they had a great place that served frozen custard there.  Eating was my hobby and my vocation.  I had friends who shared my passion.  We would plan out road trips based on the best places to eat.  I wasn't picky, though, about what I ate.  I preferred cheap and a lot then expensive and quality.  If there was nothing else to eat I would eat white bread with sugar and butter on it to get in my fix.  I got cranky if I went more then a hour or so with food.  My favorite words in the world were "all you can eat".  I called myself a garbage eater.  I would eat anything as long as it would fill me up.
Obviously there isn't really a WLS that could help me if I didn't deal with though issues.  I managed to out eat the best WLS there is.  I choose the DS because it was supposed to be fool proof.  Until it met this fool.  I finally figured out that no surgery could help me if I didn't help myself.  It occurred to me that in order to lose weight and keep it off I would have to do the exact same with WLS as I did without it, eat less and better.  There was no magic cure or answer, just a commitment to eat better, with some surgical assistance to do so.
When I first heard about WLS I thought it was a cure for obesity, that I would never be fat again if I had it.  I was wrong.  There is no cure, only treatment to help me do what I needed to do.
I discovered that restriction does help me with the quantity problem, although I fear losing that restriction if I continue to eat too much.  Mal absorption could help me, too, but even if I were able to malabsorb half of what I ate, if I ate 10,000 calories a day I would still gain weight.  Maybe not as much as I would without malabsorption but I would still gain.  Even though I managed to regain 100 lbs with my first WLS I still think of it as a success in that I was 20 lbs thinner then I was when I first had the surgery in 2002.  Without a doubt, without surgery I would have been at least 300 lbs or more.  So it did help me not gain as much as I could of.  I see people who are 300 lbs or more and I know it could be me very easily.  There was no difference in the way I ate and the way they did.  It was just a matter of time.

I have to say that I don't find this way of looking at things to be very helpful. The thing is, many of us are grazers because we're hungry all the time. Take away our ghrelin and we stop grazing. Or we still graze but we eat so much less each time so it works out.

And many of us have a sweet tooth but, again, not being hungry all the time makes that much easier to manage. Plus, so many people get RnY and don't dump long term. So getting RnY so you can dump is kind of iffy.

I look at it like this:

Does negative reinforcement work for you or are you the kind of person who has to always pu**** For some people, just the threat of dumping is enough to keep them in line. But others like to play with the line and they find out they don't dump and start eating all sorts of junk when they learn there is no consequence. Or they learn how to only eat as much as will bring them to the brink of dumping -- so they eat a cup of ice cream, 5 bites at a time, over the course of several hours.

Another issue is ghrelin. Some people eat for emotional reasons and some from boredom and habit. But a lot of people are ravenously hungry all the time because they have too much ghrelin. If so, the DS or VSG is going to do the best at controlling the ghrelin monster.

Definitely, if your only (or main) issue is volume, then pretty much any surgery works, so you might want to pick the one with the least complications or the lowest cost or some other factor that's important to you.

Finally, what about your metabolism? A lot of people have a very slow one. Or they have health restrictions that keep them from exercising. In that case, you probably want the malabsorption of the DS because otherwise you may find yourself not being able to eat as little as you have to to lose all your weight. (If you can exercise, it gives you a calorie cushion.)

I definitely agree that you have to look at lifestyle issues when picking a surgery but I think it's way more complicated than those 4 categories.

Interesting....I'm definitely a "GRAZER" (who happens to mostly graze on sweets and carbs, so I guess I'm a "SWEETER" too )   I've never been a volume eater....even before surgery I definitely had limits.  The RNY has worked perfect for me.....more than a bite of anything with refined sugar does NOT sit well with me.  Fruit and pasta are tough too but I can eat them in small amounts.   I still have bouts of grazing but I mostly do protein (cheese cubes, nuts, ham & turkey, etc.)  When I feel a serious grazing attack coming on  (boredom, stress, emotional)   I can usually ward it off with a small protein shake or 1/2 a protein bar.

Oh yeah, even though I'm a grazer, I've never missed a meal in 43 years.....and I'm 43.

Like I said in another post, I feel like at different times I have been any of the above. I feel tho' that I mainly w/am volume and carbs. If I have certain carbs they have always made me want more.

Although I have had indulgences since surgery, many times, they do not seem as good as I remember them being pre-op. I'm not sure why, but I'm loving fruits and veggies more than ever. Hopefully it will stay that way.

I was logging my food the other day and found a meal from pre-op I had saved which was 3-4 pieces of pizza along with 2-3 breadsticks! And that was when I was tracking on Weigh****chers so I must have been kinda watching what I was eating. I cannot imagine eating like that ever again, and hope I never can.

Love my sleeve!